Marital Martial
by plaguelet
Summary: Zoe/Wash -- I thought marriage was going to be like a really long one-night stand, with cooing. It's not quite that easy.


Title: Marital/Martial by Elizabeth Ann Lewis, lizbet@rhiannon.dreamhost.com  
  
Notes: Sometime after _War Stories_ (fairly shortly after, I assume). At 1 AM, after I watched _Serenity_, Zoe started *babbling*. Inspired in part by Celli's "Leaving Serenity"; if Mal doesn't know what he does and is on the ship, Zoe does... although she's never really articulated it for herself. Celli supplied the Chinese, thus saving me from burning my brain out on research. Kiki cooed, thus saving me from committing writer's harikari, certain that I had not the least grasp of Zoe's voice. Dianne put up with her roommate hovering over her, asking if she'd read it yet. And they let me live. g  
  
----------------------- Title: Marital/Martial by Elizabeth Ann Lewis, lizbet@rhiannon.dreamhost.com  
  
Wash wants to talk. Oh God.  
  
Damn, something I picked up from my beloved husband. I beat takin' the Lord's name in vain out of my speech while serving with Sergeant Reynolds, oh-he-of-much-faith, and it seemed a smart idea to keep that little three- letter-word away after Captain Reynolds of the Serenity tossed his God out the airlock. But Wash likes the old gods, and likes to pretend that if he calls on them, they'll listen.  
  
Unlike the old gods, I have to listen. Because I married him. Okay, fine, because I love him, which is why I married him and you know, sometimes, I'd like a little bit of credit for that because I never intended to fall in love and get married and it's all *his* fault anyway.  
  
I thought marriage was going to be like a really long one-night stand, with cooing. It's not quite that easy.  
  
"Do we have to do this now? I mean, now?"  
  
Wash throws his hands in the air and starts pacing around the little cabin we fondly call ours. Okay, this is going to sound really insane, but he's really sexy when he does this. Which is probably why I married him, and we can discuss my mental issues later.  
  
"That's always your response. You always want to have this discussion 'later'." He digs his hands into the air like he's scooping up a pile of credit chips, and then spreads his arms wide, a martyr to the end. "When does later come?"  
  
I sigh. "When we're not in the middle of an emergency, when we're not being chased by good guys or bad guys or any guys at all, when the ship isn't falling down around our ears, when I'm not bleeding and you're not bleeding and no one in the general vicinity is bleeding."  
  
"So, basically, never, right?"  
  
"As close to never as I can get it, yeah."  
  
"Well, right now there aren't any more than the normal amount of people chasing us, Serenity is humming along nicely, I'm not bleeding, and unless I've miscounted the days --"  
  
"Hey." I hold up a hand. "Make one crack about it being a certain time in my cycle, and you can find somewhere else to sleep."  
  
"Wouldn't dream of it," he says without missing a beat. "So we're not having this discussion now because...?"  
  
"Because you love me desperately and are about to make mad, passionate love to me?" It's worth a shot.  
  
"Always." With the serious deeply-devoted look that always gets me. "First, I want to discuss this fixation of yours."  
  
Groaning, I pound my head against the wall. "I am not in love with Mal, I don't want to sleep with him, I thought we covered this already."  
  
"I just want to know why the most independent-minded woman I've ever met, who if anyone else gave her anything resembling an order would remove delicate body parts, doesn't even bother to ask 'How high?' when Malcolm Reynolds says 'Jump'."  
  
It's a crock when they say beating your head into the wall feels good when you stop. At least when I'm bashing my skull in, I can ignore Wash. "Okay, one more time. Chain of command. Captain way up here." One hand goes as high as it can in the air and wiggles. "Everyone else, below Captain to various degrees. It's easier to run things if there is a person running them."  
  
Wash pushes his hands through his hair, making it look like it's never admitted the existence of a brush. "Zoe, honey," he says, and the temper in his voice is sucked out and replaced with a sort of patience that sounds like it's going to crack. "I understand the concept. But what you do amounts to --"  
  
"What?" I snap back when he hesitates. "What? I really want to know what it is I'm doing, since I can't seem to figure out for myself."  
  
Wash gives me the look that makes me guilty when I get huffy at him. Damn him. I hate that he does that so well. "It amounts to slavery. Except that Mal isn't the one demanding that you do this. You are."  
  
You know, I never thought that there would be a day when I figured out exactly what they meant by your jaw dropping. Piece of fei-oo. But the muscles that control my mandible relax in shock and my mouth opens.  
  
Wash takes advantage of my momentary (oh, and you'll bet it'll be momentary) silence to keep talking. "It's the Law according to Malcolm Reynolds. What he says goes. Period, full stop. What's up with that?"  
  
And suddenly I get it. I finally get what the hell he's been talking about. It's like a sneak-bomb going off really close to your head, this bright light and the feeling of pressure being released at an explosive level. And all I can do is start giggling madly.  
  
Wash scowls at me. And yes, once again, I find this sexy. I'm a sick woman. "What's the joke?" he asks, sounding, oh, about five. Maybe.  
  
I bite my lip to try to stop laughing, because I really do want to be married to this hwin dan and so I've got to figure out how to find words to say what I've just discovered inside my head. Biting my lip doesn't work very well, so I put my hands over my mouth and try to hold the laughter in. Wash's brows just get closer and closer together and the scowl gets bigger and bigger.  
  
Finally, I just figure out that the best way to quit laughing is to make my mouth busy some other way. Not surprisingly at all, Wash likes this one. When we both come up for air, he asks, "What the hell was that?"  
  
I grin at him. "Write this day down, 'cause you're not going to hear this very often. Get ready. You're right."  
  
"I'm -- what?"  
  
Oh God, whoever that may be, I'm going to start giggling again. "You're right. Absolutely right. Book's got his god, and I've got mine. Mal."  
  
"Okay, so, given that I didn't exactly say that, how does that make me right?"  
  
Shaking my head, I scrub my hands over my face. "I was a kid when I joined up with the war. On the side of the rebels, always. I couldn't stand having the Alliance on my back telling me do this, do that, file this here, take this test here. Hated it."  
  
"That's my Zoe," Wash murmurs, kissing the top of my head. That's just so disgustingly cute. I love it.  
  
"Through the last bit of the war, through the end, Mal was there. And he just..." I wave my hands around a bit. "He just had this sort of shining certainty that everything was going to work. He believed in justice. In faith. Me... I believed in him.  
  
"He doesn't have that faith anymore." Sighing, I lean my head against Wash's, settling in comfortably. "He doesn't believe in much of anything. All I can figure is, I found a better god to believe in. Mal's never let me down. And if he didn't have something to run, something to be in charge of -- feel responsible for -- he'd quit. Just quit."  
  
I sigh again, relaxing even more. God, this feels good, this cuddling. This marriage. "I guess it is sort of like worship. I obey his commands, I do what he says, and he keeps going. And I keep believing. I suppose that sounds stupid."  
  
"No, baby," Wash says, his voice barely a whisper in my ear. "No, it don't sound stupid."  
  
"Do we ever have to have this discussion again?" I ask.  
  
"Depends."  
  
"On what?"  
  
"Do we get to have hot, steamy, sexy make-up sex?"  
  
"Oh, yes."  
  
"Then no, we never have to have this discussion again."  
  
"Thank God."  
  
"Would you *stop* bringing Mal into this...?  
  
END  
  
------ 


End file.
